6. MSN Direct Features

Figure 45: Accessing the MSN Direct Features

Garmin has teamed up with Microsoft's MSN Direct (remember those ugly watches?) to provide various services based on your current location. Tap on the MSN butterfly icon to access these new services.

Figure 46: MSN Direct Main Menu

Once you're within an MSN Direct coverage area, the service status icon on the MSN Direct main menu will show an hourglass, indicating it's downloading MSN Direct data.

Figure 47: Downloading MSN Direct Data

It took about 15 minutes before the MSN Direct data became available.

Figure 48: MSN Direct Receiver Battery

The nuvi 680 actually uses two batteries: the internal battery in the nuvi 680 itself, and the battery built-in to the MSN Direct receiver. The MSN Direct battery can power the receiver for several days, so it will continue to download current traffic, gas, movie, and weather information even when the nuvi is turned off. That way, the data is immediately available the next time you use the nuvi 680.

7. MSN Direct - Traffic

Access to real-time traffic information and the ability to navigate around traffic jams is a major selling point of the nuvi 680, and probably its best feature (although I also found access to real-time gas prices a close second, as those savings can be considerable over the year). However, real-time traffic is also a complicated issue, made more complex by Garmin's decision to use MSN Direct on the nuvi 680 for traffic data instead of the TMC traffic data that the nuvi 660 uses.

MSN Direct receives its traffic information from traffic.com, which is currently being acquired by NAVTEQ. Traffic.com gathers most of its traffic data via road sensors. The nuvi 660, StreetPilot c550, Zumo, and most of Garmin's other GPS units use TMC traffic to receive ClearChannel's real-time traffic data via FM. Unlike MSN Direct's traffic data, ClearChannel's data is provided by Inrix, whose traffic coverage is (currently) more extensive than traffic.com's. Inrix gathers traffic flow data from more than 500,000 commercial, delivery and taxi vehicles across the U.S., and also collects additional traffic details such as construction and road closures, real-time incidents, sporting events, weather forecasts and school schedules.

That said, MSN Direct's traffic service provides more information about traffic problems around you. So instead of just notifying you of traffic ahead, MSN Direct will prompt the nuvi to say something like "1 incident on your route. 15 minute delay." With MSN Direct's traffic data, you'll have an idea of how long a delay is ahead of you.

So, in essence, although ClearChannel's TMC traffic data (provided by Inrix) provides greater coverage, MSN Direct's traffic data (provided by traffic.com) provides additional useful information about traffic delays. Coverage may or may not be an issue for you, depending where you live. You can check local coverage of both service by visiting Inrix (nuvi 660 and other Garmin units) and traffic.com's (MSN Direct) coverage pages. Garmin has also built a page that lets you lookup your zip code or city name and see if it's within MSN Direct coverage.

Garmin includes a full year of MSN Direct service for free with the nuvi 680. After that, it'll cost you $50/year or you can choose the $130 lifetime option. Note that the lifetime subscription is per device, not per user. So if you replace the nuvi 680 with a future GPS, the MSN Direct subscription will not transfer to the new device. By comparison, the ClearChannel traffic service used on the nuvi 660 and other Garmin units costs $60/year and there is no lifetime purchase option.

Figure 49: Launching MSN Direct Traffic

The nuvi 680's real-time traffic data is provided by the MSN Direct network. From the MSN Direct menu, tap on Traffic to view traffic conditions.